If you have a loved one with cancer or if you are having a love affair with cancer join me here. This is an uplifting, alluring and realistic saga of Love in the Time of cancer. I am also writing this because as Mark Twain said, “I don’t want to hear about the moon from a man who has not been there.” Loving a man with cancer is my moon. Take the next step with me.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Caregiving Your Marriage--Rosalyn Carter

I began this blog years ago because I was in a new,
wonderfully romantic relationship and then a great marriage when we began to
deal with cancer. I had had cancer years before but it hadn’t effected me the
way that having a partner with cancer did.

This was a hard won relationship and while I was worried about
John’s diagnosis it was the lack of concern for couples and their relationships
that got me writing “Love in the Time of Cancer.” Everyone had ideas about how
to get a body to survive colon cancer but no one—not a doctor, nurse, or
oncologist—was interested in helping to ensure that the marriage would have
equally good health.

Now, years later, I’ve been writing, speaking and teaching
about couples and cancer care for a long time, and I no longer blush when I say,
“swallow”. But I still try to read everything I can find about caregiving. So
how humbling it was this week to pick up one of the first (and best) books on
how to be a good caregiver and find a whole chapter called, “Maintaining Your
Marriage.”

The book is, “Helping Yourself Help Others” by Rosalynn Carter. Yes, she is former first lady and wife of President Jimmy Carter. Her
book was published in 1994—long before anyone was talking about the Boomer Bump
or caregiving support groups, or “navigation”. But in a sense it’s no surprise
that she was so far ahead of the curve. You may also remember that Rosalynn Carter chose to focus her term in office as first lady on the diagnosis, care
and treatment of people with serious mental illness. (To recall the seriousness
of bringing a public focus to serious mental illness you must remember that
Jackie Kennedy’s focus was on beautifying the White House and Lady Bird Johnson
used her national resources to highlight gardening.)

In her book, Carter writes from personal experience as a
family caregiver and she also highlights all that she learned in her work
before and after The White House. The Table of Contents lists sections that
address: isolation, burnout, family dynamics, dealing with doctors and the
chapter on maintaining your marriage.

In that chapter she directly addresses the harm to “intimate
relations” and a couple’s physical relationship and while she does not specifically
answer the, “Can I swallow?” question that I asked professionals she doesn’t
not hide behind the “be sure to cuddle” advice that is the coward’s fall back
for a couple that really wants answers.

Carter talks about what may be the hardest step of all:
Giving each other breathing room—allowing others into the hard won intimacy of
a good marriage to lessen the emotional strain of cancer.

Rosalyn Carter’s book from 1994 is the perfect partner for
the more recent and also excellent book about being a caregiving spouse: Gail
Sheehy’s “Passages for Caregivers.”

We will all need these books sooner or later so buy yours
now. Because as Rosalynn Carter said so wisely in 1993: